Co-Financed by
Project Designation
Project Code
Main Goal
In this project, the goal is to develop a prototype that includes technological solutions applicable to the next generation of Secondary Substations (SS). The proposed activities and tasks within the scope of this project include the specification, development, construction, testing, and integration of the solutions designed across the various technological aspects of a SS.
Beneficiary Entity
Total eligible Investment
Financial support from the European Union
Eneida.io Investment Period
Approval Date
Start Date
End Date
Framework and Objectives
Among the main objectives of the project are:
• Develop a modular enclosure with high thermal, acoustic, physical, and mechanical performance, including: sustainable materials; environmental sensing and intelligent regulation of natural ventilation; urban customization; green roofs and façades to enhance performance and CO₂ capture.
• Develop solutions for network resilience: wireless sensing of electrical and environmental variables (energy harvesting, plug and play, interchangeable/operable).
• Design a substation controller with: modular and distributed architecture; remote monitoring and self-healing of the LV network; asset condition monitoring; management of DER assets and public lighting; automatic and agnostic mapping of smart meters.
• Design an MV/LV transformer according to Ecodesign principles, with improved energy efficiency, lower sound power, and a new partial discharge (PD) sensor.
• Create MV switchgear with reduced volume and adapted to the new PD sensor and fault detector.
• Develop a flexible application device – for use in the substation and LV network – for: voltage regulation; provision of grid services, e.g., harmonic distortion mitigation, phase balancing, sag and power factor compensation.
• Develop an energy storage system, aligned with Ecodesign principles, to enhance the functionality of the previous device; contribute to energy efficiency and provide capacity support during self-healing.
Main Results
EWS DTVI-m Sensor de correntes e tensões do QGBT, com comunicação Ethernet.
EWS DTVI-l Sensor do Electrodo Terra, com comunicação BLE.
EWS DTVI-l Sensor de correntes e tensões do QGBT, com comunicação LoRa.
EWS DTPD-b Sensor de Descargas parciais e temperatura do Transformador, com comunicação BLE.
EWS DTHT-b Sensor de Humidade e temperatura, com comunicação BLE.
Communication and Dissemination
Pedro J.G. Carreira, Jorge M.G.M Santos, Vasco G.M. Ferreira, Luis Azevedo, Nuno Costa, Fernando Gomes, Clara Gouveia, Eric Zanghi, Jorge Pereira, Nuno Simões, António Tadeu, António Coimbra, José Oliveira, Alexandre Aparício, “NEXTSTEP – Developing future smart secondary substations”, CIRED 2021 Conference, Geneva, 21-24 June 2021.
Fernandes, L.; Catalão, R.; Pires, L.; Pinto. J.; Janeiro, C.; Cordeiro, M. – “Pioneer earth systems remote monitoring for secondary distribution substations”. CIRED 2019, Madrid, Spain. June 2019.
Faria, J.; Lima, D.; Oliveira, L.; Oliveira, J.; Cardoso, F. – “Smart Distribution transformers: Non-invasive Sensing to Enable Business Transformation”. CIRED 2019, Madrid, Spain. June 2019.
NextSTEP Results presented in Europen Utility Week 2019, in Paris.
Consortium Partners
Subcontracted Partners
